don't wanna

All week at Ashtyn's school it has been PRIDE week! Leading up to Friday nights football game against Norman North all the schools in Mustang participated in pep rallys and team building! Tonight, Ashtyn's school was invited to participate in pre-game activities at the high school football game! Any kids who wanted to come were welcome to show up to the football field house before kick off and meet the football players and then walk out onto the field, in front of the crowd, to lead everyone in the pledge of allegiance and finally get to run through the tunnel with the football players before the game began!! Ashtyn was excited all day! We talked about it many times! After dinner, we got Ash ready!! He wore his Bronco Pride shirt and Mustang tattoo on his cheek! He was all ready to go...
but the outfit wasn't complete without a camo bandaide!

Maddox and I arrived at the football field about 30 minutes early and tried to get some good seats to see Ash run through the tunnel. Then we watched the football team warm up! Maddox referred to the teams as the "good guys" and the "bad guys"! HA!

As if the football team wasn't enough, Maddox got even more excited when the band marched around the track! Maddox himself marched up and down in front of the fence pretending he was playing the drums!

After 30+ minutes of waiting outside, in the cold, for Ashtyn to run through the football tunnel I saw Brandon in the distance walking toward me and Maddox holding Ashtyn's hand. Huh??? Ash was supposed to be lining up to run through the tunnel. As Brandon and Ashtyn approached us Brandon just shook his head at me and then said "He's too scared." I talked to Ashtyn and he said he was scared and didn't want to go on the field. I tried everything to try and change his mind (even bribing) but nothing was going to make him budge. So...what's a family to do? Well, we bought snacks and settled in to watch some football!

Once the football players began running onto the field Brandon and I both looked at each other and agreed (with a good laugh) that it's probably best that Ashtyn didn't go down into the tunnel. Parents weren't allowed to go with the kids, they were only accompanied by a few teachers from their school, and all the kids followed the football players through the smoke filled tunnel. Also, as the first football player made an appearance out of the tunnel police sirens started going off and loud air guns started being shot off. We pictured Ashtyn standing inside the dark tunnel surrounded by smoke, covering his ears from the loud sounds and refusing to move. Yep, that would be him. Oh well, though. We had fun introducing the boys to football "in real life" and muching popcorn while sipping hot chocolate!

Here are the autographs Ash got on his Bronco t-shirt from 2 of the Mustang High School football players! He is quite proud of them!

If Ash had run through the tunnel, here is what it would have looked like. As you can definitely hear in the video the "tunnel event" is quite loud! The boys both do want to go back to another game though! They had fun! Next time they want mom and dad to take extra money along though so that they can buy a glow stick at the souvineer table. I guess we'll have to make that happen!